


Humming the Pain Away

by hopefulmuffins



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: I couldn't draw this story so I decided to write it, I don't know what I'm doing, M/M, Other, introspective piece, keith focused, out of character most likely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 01:17:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15474288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopefulmuffins/pseuds/hopefulmuffins
Summary: But what he remembers most is when his father would sing to him, low and crackly almost never on key, but it soothed him.





	Humming the Pain Away

He remembers his father vividly, a hero, even though the extent of which he will not know of until much later in life. He remembers the rushed breakfasts turned into races to get him to school, the games they played while his father drove the hover bike. Both showing Keith the bikes controls and pointing out which rocks looked like animals.

The memory of his father’s warm laughter on those days is a soothing balm when the days are too cold and lonely. His father’s hugs could have been a legend in and of themselves, his broad shoulders and strong arms always had room for him and kept him safe when life got too scary.

But what he remembers most is when his father would sing to him, low and crackly almost never on key, but it soothed him. Made stargazing at night with him that much more entertaining when Keith was able to sing along. He can still hear the note of melancholy in his father’s voice on those nights under the stars. The longing look in his eyes as he continued to crone one of many of his made up little ditties, slowly morphing into talking about the constellations and the solar system, sparking a feeling of longing and excitement in Keith’s childish heart, those nights he could have sworn the desert sang back. 

His father would sing to him so often and so constantly that when he was gone he was left in a silence so deep and unfamiliar he found himself retreating into himself. His little ditties becoming private affairs whispered to himself in the dead of night while looking out the window at the night sky. They didn’t hold the same wonder they used to anymore. 

He spent years like this until the garrison sent a guest speaker to his school, who acted as if he saw something within him that Keith had long since thought had died. He needed this guest speaker to give up on him, just like all the others, he couldn’t allow anyone else in close enough to have their absence haunt him like the ghost of his father’s voice. But the guest speaker was of a crafty sort and soon he wriggled his way into Keith’s life becoming the spark that gave it meaning.

So when he left, it hurt but he knew that he would come back to him. He had no doubt. That is until the news came back, whispering to him in an eerily familiar crackling lullaby: Pilot Error. He knew something was wrong, this wasn’t right. He had just started to trust the stars again, his father’s voice had finally started to ease back into a comforting memory instead of a constant nightmare of what was long lost. It wasn’t right and he would do anything to make it right again, no one else was allowed to live on only in his memory, not if he could help it. 

But it was the same story everywhere he went, they all believed that what the news said was true and told him to let go, to stop focusing on the mistakes of the mission and focus on being better than the previous pilot. To mourn and move on and live to honor a memory of someone who they insisted would never return. Until one day he heard his father’s voice joined by a smooth baritone, a song that was a little silly but still heartfelt. He knew that voice, had heard it sparingly, as it hummed in the simulators and over their shared comms as they raced. A voice that hadn’t realized it was even singing until Keith had pointed it out with a hitch in his throat. 

The song was slow but thunderous in his head as Iverson introduced the new Kerberos simulation, left him stunned and numb as he felt a strong hand on his arm try to drag him into the cockpit. No no no, he couldn’t be in there, he couldn’t act as if this was fact, they won’t force him to leave Shiro as a memory. Keith’s hand connected so fast and hard with the commanders face that the force surprised even himself as the large man went down gracelessly, his eye already showing signs of swelling. He doesn’t remember how he got out of there, but the next thing he knew he was out in the desert sitting in an empty plot of land where a house once stood many years ago, foreclosed and torn down long before he could inherit it. 

That night Keith sang himself to sleep with hitching sobs in a shack that once housed the tools for his father’s hover bike. Marking the start to a very long year in a desert that had fallen far too silent in his absence. Becoming a place where he started to understand that melancholic note that had crept too often into his father’s voice.

When a falling star turned into a comet making its way towards his part of the desert keith knew he had to check it out, a gut feeling spurring him up out of bed despite aching muscles and a clenching stomach. A broken hum leaving his seldom used throat as he encouraged himself to move faster after seeing the garrison moving out across the way,their lights flooding the desert like a swarm of fireflies. What he found bathed in those lights was a ship of origins unknown to him and he knew that there was something inside that would lead him back to Shiro. He snuck away and planted some small bombs left over from what little his father’s shack was able to save and went back to wait for the perfect time. 

They scrambled like cockroaches when the bombs went off and he slithered in, taking out the medical team in seconds, determination singing through him and vibrating in his throat. A person was strapped to a table and when he turned their face, they let out a small groan. Even scarred and more tired than he had ever seen him he recognized Shiro. And for the first time that year his heart and mind were no longer clawing away at silence, but were breaking into crackling songs about flying, and lost ones found. But before he could get any of that out a loud boy steps in and grabs a hold of Shiro as well. 

An interruption he had not expected but as long as they didn’t stop him from getting Shiro out and safe he would accept it. And even with the garrison scrambling back and having to take on three extra people he had not accounted for he couldn’t help but notice how the desert seemed to hum back to him for the first time since his father died. And if later that night he sang a small nonsense ditty to the unconscious man on his deteriorating couch there was no one but himself and his father’s crooning memory to hear it.

**Author's Note:**

> I've never posted a story on here before, but I hope you like it. I've been imagining Keith singing to himself as a form of comfort and just trying to imagine how it would have affected his character. Although I'm pretty sure it's way out of character. Please feel free to leave criticism if you like, but no hate comments please and thank you.


End file.
